


Sweetly, Sweetly Through the Night

by NoelleAngelFyre



Series: Twelve Fics of Christmas 2020 [6]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Character Study, Childhood Memories, F/M, Female Role Models in Youth, Flirting When You're High, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Romance, character backstory, fond memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28163382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoelleAngelFyre/pseuds/NoelleAngelFyre
Summary: He was sixteen when he first learned about angels.
Relationships: Mick Rory & Caitlin Snow, Mick Rory & Leonard Snart, Mick Rory/Caitlin Snow
Series: Twelve Fics of Christmas 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043328
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Sweetly, Sweetly Through the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Angels We Have Heard on High".

He was sixteen and two weeks fresh into his second stint at juvie hall. The lady was a nice sort: motherly, maybe even old enough to _be_ his mom, always with a cloth tied around her head to hide the loss of hair. Cancer, she’d told him. These sorts were always the ones to share too many details, or so the guards always grumbled, but at sixteen Mick didn’t mind. Probably wouldn’t mind as a grown man either, if they were all like this lady, this Miss Robyn with her cherry-pink bandana and a smile that didn’t let on nearly how much pain she must’ve been in at the time. Even so, she didn’t let it, the pain or the cancer or anything else, slow her stride. Mick respected the hell out of that. Sick and suffering and she still came by every Friday night, sure as you’d set your watch, with a smile and a basket full of books.

She was a church-goer, Miss Robyn, which was something new to Mick at sixteen. His old man shot a pair of folks, the kind who ‘spread the Word,’ clean off the porch when Mick was nine, and that right there was how religion and church and all that was discussed in the Rory household: it wasn’t. Religion was for weak-minded idiots and had no place in a ‘real’ man’s house.

The old man’s ranting aside, Mick couldn’t see any weak about Miss Robyn’s mind, and he was the only kid in the clink to give her the time of day. Friday night, like clockwork, they sat in a visiting room: two chairs, a small table, and books. A couple guards started to run their mouths about Miss Robyn’s ‘intentions’ with a young punk kid; went places they shouldn’t have gone with the imagination. Mick beat it out of them and earned a week in solitary for it. No regrets.

As a man broaching fifty faster than he’d like to admit, Mick realizes that his (private) interest in books and (even more private) inclination towards writing a few of his own probably started there: Miss Robyn and her bandana, voice like honey and warm blankets and simple pleasures, reading to him from books with pictures in black-and-white or in vivid color. She read him stories about nearly every topic under the sun, but the story he always liked best was about some wayward kid trying to make his own way in life who got a helping hand from above. Literally. Kid got himself a guardian angel.

The book didn’t have any pictures, so Miss Robyn explained that a guardian angel was an angel just for one person: a helper, protector, someone who kept an eye out, covered the kid’s back in trouble, and so on. Above all, she told Mick, this was a very special angel because this angel believed the person could do better. When the kid didn’t believe in himself, the angel believed enough for both of them.

Sure, at sixteen Mick didn’t believe in angels anymore than he did pigs could fly, but it was a nice thought to play over in his head while staring at concrete walls. Once, when he was running a fever from hell, he asked Miss Robyn if _she_ was a guardian angel. She’d laughed – not at him, with him – and fed him some more ice chips. Then she told him he would find his own angel later in life. Or something like that. Fever doesn’t make for clear memory.

Thirty-some years later, he’s sitting on a hospital bed in S.T.A.R. labs, a hole in his arm, a crack in his rib (or three), and he’s lost his favorite shirt to a whole bunch of blood. Len’s got a scowl on his face deeper than the Grand Canyon and looks ready to knock out a few teeth for good measure.

Snow won’t hear of it. She banished Len to the corner and told him to zip it until she was finished. Girl’s about as far from Miss Robyn as it can get – full head of hair, perfect health, and twenty years younger – but she’s got an attitude and brass in her spine to back it up. Not many people can put Len in time-out and live to tell about it.

“So what happened _this_ time?” Snow asks while she’s mopping up half-dried blood from his arm; it’s a blatant reminder, just in case he forgot, that this isn’t the first time Len’s had to drag his carcass in here for a fix-up, “The guy look at you wrong?”

“Three guys, thank you very much,” he will not have the details disputed on this, “Recognized me from TV and decided to throw around their weight. Didn’t have the muscle to back it up.”

“No, but they certainly had the firepower.” She frowns at the bullet wound, “I guess that’s called over-compensation.”

Mick snorts, then winces as his ribs protest, “I like you, Snow. You know the score.”

“…well, thank you. I suppose I don’t _dis_ like you, all things considered.” Another reminder, this time of their first meeting which, yeah, was not a proud display of his charm; he blames Len and his stupid at-the-time obsession with the Flash, otherwise Mick is confident he could’ve done better with this one, “I would appreciate if you would stop coming by just to bleed all over my med bay.”

“Got somewhere better in mind?”

“No, just if you would—” her mouth hangs open for half a minute, then clicks shut as she turns with a sharp motion that sends her hair tumbling left and right; reminds him of those fancy ribbon displays Lisa used to play with, back when she was trying to decide between gymnastics and ice skating, “…Is that your way of flirting with me?”

“Not my best, but you do have a needle shootin’ me up with the good stuff.” He folds the good arm behind his head and lays back with a grin.

“Well, that certainly explains it, because _that_ was terrible.”

Yeah, it was. “Gimme a couple days, Snow. I’ll think of something better.”

Snow looks halfway tempted to pop him upside the head – he’d rather she not, since Len’s gonna be doing that all night on the way home – and then pushes out a heavy sigh and goes back to stitching him up. “If you’re going to _insist_ on this line of conversation,” and he most certainly is, because she’s sexy when she’s annoyed and molten-hot-lava-sexy when she’s mad, “then I feel you should be warned: I prefer men of action instead of words.”

He doesn’t as much file that little tidbit away as he does paint it across the front of his brain: ten-foot script, bold print, neon lights.

“So I shouldn’t point out the halo you got going on there?” he vaguely references the white shimmer around her head, painting that mass of full curls in a way he’s only seen once before: some fancy over-priced painting in the art museum that Len hocked to pay for Lisa’s Christmas shopping spree last year.

Snow pauses again, and damned if there isn’t a faint hint of pink coloring her cheeks before she clears her throat and finishes with the bandages, “I think that’s the medicine talking, Rory. I’m no angel.”

“Sure ‘bout that?”

He wouldn’t _swear_ to it, not when he’s doped halfway out of his mind, but he’s _pretty_ sure he sees a smile before she turns her head away again.


End file.
